We’re back from a great couple of days at Adwanted’s Future of Brands, Audio and Entertainment at London’s County Hall. It was a jam-packed agenda, with presentations and panels covering the latest developments in gaming, sports, radio, podcasts, social media, and of course telly. We’ve come away feeling super inspired about all the work that was shared!
There were a few key themes that really stood out to us over the 2-days:
TV isn’t dead! Simon Frazier from the IPA kicked off the day with some data from Touchpoints proving that media consumption patterns aren’t drastically changing. The majority of media time is commercial time, and that’s only going to get bigger with the likes of Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and others moving into the ad-funded tier space. This means TV is going to remain an important part of any media plan, but it’s key to think about how linear interacts with the likes of SVODs, BVODs, FAST (and any other acronyms…!).
Audio is having it’s moment, but is a complex space! The digital audio market has seen huge growth over recent years, but measurement is tricky! We heard from Radiocentre about how the measurement of Radio campaigns isn’t up to scratch – with most audio occasions occurring alongside other activities, consumers don’t tend to respond to audio advertising immediately – instead typically reacting up to 19 hours later! Measurement needs to reflect this. Global also took to the stage to talk about Audio Attention off the back of our recent study with them. Watch this space for the full launch of this exciting piece of work!
Inclusivity & representation remains important: Chris Dunne from Outvertising introduced their recent report around LGBTQIA+ consumers – it’s a fascinating read into their attitudes, preferences and expectations from brands. Chris was joined on the stage by Heineken, Dentsu X and Purple Goat Agency who discussed their collaboration. Strongbow had experienced a decline with the brand becoming less relevant, despite ‘for everyone’ being one of their core values. Working with LGBTQIA+ consumers they understood what ‘for everyone’ actually meant, which resulted in a really fun, fully inclusive and accessible activation at Brighton Pride. It was a really interesting discussion, which chimed with a lot of the work we’ve been doing with Channel 4 and Paramount on the importance of inclusive and representative advertising. It was also really refreshing to see and hear how the panellists introduced themselves on stage in a truly inclusive and accessible way!
Together is better: a big theme was around how creative and media agencies need to collaborate for brands to get the best campaigns. We saw some great case studies where agencies worked brilliantly together and created some really exciting, innovative campaigns – including this example from Travel Supermarket and BBC.
There was so much more fascinating content, but I wanted to end this blog post sharing my personal favourite. Evie Clifton from Mindshare talked about the golden rules of great TikTok creative, and shared this great example of the Tesco voice of checkout campaign (and the sabotage from The Co-op), a great watch!
All in all a great two days, and we’re already excited for next year’s event!